🫙✨The Nexialist #0163

wiser | a frictionless world is boring as f*ck | lontra provocax | sonoluminescence | chaos theory | von dutch | somebody that i used to know | deira

Mar 07, 2024

welcome to another weekly batch of cyberphysical brainsparks, the nexialist

hey you! i hope this message finds you safe and sound. i’m back after a beautiful week off in bariloche, argentina, with my boyfriend juan and our friend giacomo. we spent so much time in nature, with stunning views of the mountains and lakes, i’m still in awe. we also had an intensive digital detox / immersive forest immersion (i would say a true shinrin-yoku, like mentioned on tn#137): two days completely offline, around 30km up and down to the base of the tronador mountain. i did not know what i had signed up for, so i was unprepared and my legs were hurting by the end (thank you juan and giacomo for all the support), but the whole experience was priceless. it was a great reminder to take better care of my physical health, to spend more time with thoughts and with nature, without interruptions or the internet to intermediate everything. now, i leave you with some contents, which are inevitably in the afterglow of vacations and time offline. enjoy! 🫀✨

—Rodrigo Turra

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👓wiser

i had the honor of being invited by the team of wiser, like a pinterest for knowledge, for a short and sweet content selection for their newsletter. the platform looks really neat and very much with nexialist vibes, so i will be exploring it. this is my (still empty) profile, in case anyone is there.

brainsparks: knowledge curation (tn#14), content curation approaches (tn#54), learning pyramid (tn#156), content diet (tn#2)

🏞️a frictionless world is boring as f*ck

while i hadn’t read this text yet by

Thomas Klaffke

, i had saved it to read later and title kept flashing in my head while going up and down the base of the tronador mountain. i was tired, and kept wondering wtf i was doing, and why that trail wasn’t more seamless (i know… i’m newbie, i did not know what i had signed up for). we did go up another mountain with the cable car, and while it was equally beautiful, it was not transformative, like doing all that hiking and being immersed in nature. it was the perfect reading to come back to.

First of all, many frictionless experiences require serious costs, which, through clever black box and dissociation practices, have been hidden or externalized by companies. kyla scanlon, who does super interesting commentary on the economy, calls this “subsidizing affluence”, which basically describes a non-profitable economy building non-essential but highly frictionless, cheap, and addictive services and products by exploiting a hidden-away “underclass” of people (or servant economy), externalizing the costs that come with that, and then selling these “frictionless services” as an achievement of an affluent society. “We” have frictionless, convenient lifestyles enabled by digital technology only because others do not have it.

brainsparks: techworry (tn#33), shinrin-yoku (tn#137), super industry of the imaginary (tn#28), hyperindustry of the artificial imaginary (tn#118), self-outsourcing age (tn#17)

🦦lontra provocax

the mascot of the national park we went to, nahuel huapi, was a huillín: an endangered species, also known as lontra provocax, river otters, river cats (gato de río) or little river wolves (lobito de río). it doesn’t get cuter than this 😍 i wish we saw them in their habitat, but they’re quite hard to come by. (we did see flamingos though, and that was incredible).

brainsparks: how many wolves are inside you? (tn#143), ferreting out (tn#156)

🫙sonoluminescence

i’m not sure where this came from on my feed ( i would guess @gustavo), but there is something magical and mysterious about this soundwave-to-light phenomenon. i mean, if this doesn’t explain the big bang, i don’t know what does ✨

Seth Putterman called it the star in a jar. A tiny spot of bright light contained in a flask of liquid. This star in a jar is made when a soundwave is passed through a small bubble inside a flask of liquid. This sound wave makes the bubble do something remarkable— first it expands, then it collapses and this collapse happens so violently that vapor molecules trapped inside the bubble slammed together and heat up so much that the bubble gives off an incredible burst of heat and light several thousand times a second giving the appearance of a star.

brainsparks: sonic healing (tn#11)

🌀chaos theory

“One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” —Friedrich Nietzche

then this post by willow defebaugh appeared in my e-mail with this opening quote.

Dear reader, have you ever stopped to think about how many things had to go right in order for you to be sitting here reading these words? How much had to go wrong? How many ancestors had to narrowly avoid death, had to find each other across famines and floods, wander across wars and wastelands? How many tragedies and missteps had to place them at specific points in space and time, a map of possibilities? Is there any order to the madness that made you?

brainsparks: everything, everywhere, all at once (tn#78), chaordic (tn#44), randomizing your research (tn#72)

😎von dutch

the new video of charli is pure chaos and maximalism. i was trying to understand where that familiar sound came from, until i found the sample: bodyrox - yeah yeah.

brainsparks: crash (tn#63)

🩰somebody that i used to know

i can’t believe this song will be 13 this year. and i’m so proud to see such a beautiful work done by sergio reis, the brazilian choreographer who is also behind troy sivan’s iconic video rush (tn#130). the outfits, the moves, the camera work. the richness of movements allowed me to notice new details in the song, even though i’ve heard it dozens of time. from i got chills watching it. also, so nice to see a dance company from the netherlands, cdk, doing such amazing work.

brainsparks: rush (tn#130)

🇵🇸deira

such a beautiful video and message from saint levan, jerusalem-born us-based palestenian rapper.

between the river and the mountains
i find my belonging
between the shore and the sand
is where my life began

brainsparks: green colonialism (tn#145)

see you next week, stars out of jars 🫙✨

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